Experiments Past

Experiments Past PDF Author: Jodi Reeves Flores
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789088902512
Category : Archaeology
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
With Experiments Past the important role that experimental archaeology has played in the development of archaeology is finally uncovered and understood. Experimental archaeology is a method to attempt to replicate archaeological artefacts and/or processes to test certain hypotheses or discover information about those artefacts and/or processes. It has been a key part of archaeology for well over a century, but such experiments are often embedded in wider research, conducted in isolation or never published or reported. Experiments Pasts provides readers with a glimpse of experimental work and experience that was previously inaccessible due to language, geographic and documentation barriers, while establishing a historical context for the issues confronting experimental archaeology today. This volume contains formal papers on the history of experimental methodologies in archaeology, as well as personal experiences of the development of experimental archaeology from early leaders in the field, such as Hans-Ole Hansen. Also represented in these chapters are the histories of experimental approaches to taphonomy, the archaeology of boats, building structures and agricultural practices, as well as narratives on how experimental archaeology has developed on a national level in several European countries and its role in encouraging a wide-scale interest and engagement with the past.

Experiments Past

Experiments Past PDF Author: Jodi Reeves Flores
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789088902512
Category : Archaeology
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
With Experiments Past the important role that experimental archaeology has played in the development of archaeology is finally uncovered and understood. Experimental archaeology is a method to attempt to replicate archaeological artefacts and/or processes to test certain hypotheses or discover information about those artefacts and/or processes. It has been a key part of archaeology for well over a century, but such experiments are often embedded in wider research, conducted in isolation or never published or reported. Experiments Pasts provides readers with a glimpse of experimental work and experience that was previously inaccessible due to language, geographic and documentation barriers, while establishing a historical context for the issues confronting experimental archaeology today. This volume contains formal papers on the history of experimental methodologies in archaeology, as well as personal experiences of the development of experimental archaeology from early leaders in the field, such as Hans-Ole Hansen. Also represented in these chapters are the histories of experimental approaches to taphonomy, the archaeology of boats, building structures and agricultural practices, as well as narratives on how experimental archaeology has developed on a national level in several European countries and its role in encouraging a wide-scale interest and engagement with the past.

Experimental Archaeology

Experimental Archaeology PDF Author: John Morton Coles
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781932846263
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
First published in 1979, this text picks out the major trends in experimental archaeology. However the choice of work described is selective and represents the author's interest in archaeological experiment as an important means of retrieving and explaining evidence about early societies.

Designing Experimental Research in Archaeology

Designing Experimental Research in Archaeology PDF Author: Jeffrey R. Ferguson
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607320223
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Each chapter addresses a particular classification of material culture---ceramics, stone tools, perishable materials, composite hunting technology, butchering practices and bone tools, and experimental zooarchaeology---detailing issues that must be considered in the development of experimental archaeology projects and discussing potential pitfalls. The experiments follow coherent and consistent research designs and procedures that are given theoretical context. Contributors outline methods that will serve as a guide in future experiments. This degree of standardization is uncommon in traditional archaeological research but is essential to experimental archaeology. --

Experiencing Archaeology by Experiment

Experiencing Archaeology by Experiment PDF Author: Penny Cunningham
Publisher: Oxbow Books Limited
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
There is a growing trend among archaeologists to re-create artefacts and actions at a 1:1 scale in order to answer questions and gain new insights into the past. In November 2007, the University of Exeter hosted a one-day conference on experimental archaeology, and it was soon discovered that experience is a key issue in understanding the use of materials and past processes. Papers presented in this volume consider both theoretical issues and practical case studies. The scope ranges from skinning animals or dyeing wool the Roman way, to producing sound with flint tools, carving stone on Chalcolithic Cyprus, or casting bronze objects both as art and science in Ireland. The eight chapters in this book demonstrate the myriad possibilities of archaeology by experiment. Experimental archaeology is multi-disciplinary by nature, with examples from anthropology, ethnography, taxidermy, finite element analysis and manufacturing systems theory all being present in this volume. Not only does this sub-discipline have a colourful and meaningful past, but it will surely have a significant future.

Archaeology by Experiment

Archaeology by Experiment PDF Author: John Coles
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317606094
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
Experimental archaeology is a new approach to the study of early man. By reconstructing and testing models of ancient equipment with the techniques available to early man, we learn how he lived, hunted, fought and built. What did early man eat? How did he store and cook his food? How did he make his tools and weapons and pottery? Such everyday questions, besides the more dramatic mysteries associated with the monuments of Easter Island and Stonehenge and the colonization of Polynesia, can all be explored by experiment.

Designing Experimental Research in Archaeology

Designing Experimental Research in Archaeology PDF Author: Jeffrey R. Ferguson
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607320231
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Designing Experimental Research in Archaeology is a guide for the design of archaeological experiments for both students and scholars. Experimental archaeology provides a unique opportunity to corroborate conclusions with multiple trials of repeatable experiments and can provide data otherwise unavailable to archaeologists without damaging sites, remains, or artifacts. Each chapter addresses a particular classification of material culture-ceramics, stone tools, perishable materials, composite hunting technology, butchering practices and bone tools, and experimental zooarchaeology-detailing issues that must be considered in the development of experimental archaeology projects and discussing potential pitfalls. The experiments follow coherent and consistent research designs and procedures and are placed in a theoretical context, and contributors outline methods that will serve as a guide in future experiments. This degree of standardization is uncommon in traditional archaeological research but is essential to experimental archaeology. The field has long been in need of a guide that focuses on methodology and design. This book fills that need not only for undergraduate and graduate students but for any archaeologist looking to begin an experimental research project.

Egyptology in the Present

Egyptology in the Present PDF Author: Carolyn Graves-Brown
Publisher: Classical Press of Wales
ISBN: 1910589098
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
This volume builds bridges between usually-separate social groups, between different methodologies and even between disciplines. It is the result of an innovative conference held at Swansea University in 2010, which brought together leading craftspeople and academics to explore the all-too-often opposed practices of experimental and experiential archaeology. The focus is upon Egyptology, but the volume has a wider importance. The experimental method is privileged in academic institutions and thus perhaps is subject to clear definitions. It tends to be associated with the scientific and technological. In opposition, the experiential is more rarely defined and is usually associated with schoolchildren, museums and heritage centres; it is often criticised for being unscientific. The introductory chapter of this volume examines the development of these traditionally-assumed differences, giving for the first time a critical and careful definition of the experiential in relation to the experimental. The two are seen as points on a continuum with much common ground. This claim is borne out by succeeding chapters, which cover such topics as textiles, woodworking and stoneworking. And Salima Ikram, Professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, here demonstrates remarkably that our understanding of the classic Egyptian funerary practice of mummification benefits from both 'scientific' experimental and sensual experiential approaches. The volume, however, is important not only for Egyptology but for archaeological method more generally. The papers illuminate the pioneering of individuals who founded modern archaeological practice. Several papers are truly groundbreaking and deserve to circulate far beyond Egyptology. Thus the archaeologist Marquardt Lund tackles the problem of understanding the earliest known depictions of flint knife manufacture, those from an Egyptian tomb dated around 1900 BC. He shows the importance of thinking outside 'traditional', i.e. modern, knapping practice. Lund's knapping method, guided by the tomb depictions, is surprising but effective, and very different from that presented in manuals of lithic technology or taught in academic institutions.

Experimental Archaeology

Experimental Archaeology PDF Author: John M. Coles
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
The first chapter is an historical treatment of experimental archaeology, questioning the evidence and devising new approaches. The following chapters look at ocean voyages, the production of food and the building of houses, the manufacture and use of tools and weapons, achievements in arts and music, the erection of monumental struc¬tures for the dead and, finally, modern attempts to experience 'life in the past'. The conclusion sums up the achievements and the potential of experimental archaeology and stresses the great opportunities that exist for future work. Anyone, from the amateur to the professional archaeologist or ethno¬grapher, will find this book stimulating and enlightening, and it will be invaluable to all students and teachers. It provides an approach which helps archaeologists tackle the perennial problem - how the surviving relics can throw light on the life of the past. Professor John Coles has been a Fellow of the British Academy since 1978, and until 1986 was Professor of European Archaeology in the University of Cambridge. Dr. Coles is best known in British archaeology for his work in three fields; first in the archaeology of the Bronze Age, both in this country and in Europe; second, for his remarkably percipient and pioneering work on experimental archaeology; third, for his work with his wife Bryony on the wetland sites of the British Isles, and particularly in the Somerset Levels. John Coles is the best type of humane archaeologist; a scholar who understands both the scientific and theoretical complexities of his discipline without having succumbed to the many pseudo-scientific interpretations of the subject which have so bedeviled it over the last thirty years.

Experiments in Egyptian Archaeology

Experiments in Egyptian Archaeology PDF Author: Denys A. Stocks
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134400780
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
In this fresh and engaging volume, Denys A. Stocks examines the archaeological and pictorial evidence for masonry in ancient Egypt. Through a series of experiments in which he tests and evaluates over two hundred reconstructed and replica tools, he brings alive the methods and practices of ancient Egyptian craftworking, highlighting the innovations and advances made by this remarkable civilisation. This practical approach to understanding the fundamentals of ancient Egyptian stoneworking shows the evolution of tools and techniques, and how these come together to produce the wonders of Egyptian art and architecture. Comprehensively illustrated with over two hundred photographs and drawings, Experiments in Egyptian Archaeology will bring a fresh perspective to the puzzles of Egyptian craft and technology. By combining the knowledge of a modern engineer with the approach of an archaeologist and historian, Denys Stocks has created a work that will capture the imagination of all Egyptology scholars and enthusiasts

Experimentation and Interpretation

Experimentation and Interpretation PDF Author: Theoretical Archaeology Group (England). Conference
Publisher: Oxbow Books Limited
ISBN: 9781842173992
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Experimental archaeology is today forging new links between archaeological scientists and theorists. Many of the best archaeological projects today are those which use methodology and interpretation from both the sciences and the arts. The papers presented here reflect this interdisciplinary approach and focus on sites and material culture spanning from the Mesolithic to the Late Medieval periods. They range from the history of experimentation in archaeology and its place within the field today, to the theory behind `the experiment', to several projects which have used controlled experimentation to test hypotheses about archaeological remains, past actions, and the scientific processes we use. Now that archaeology has moved beyond the focus of the Processual/Post-Processual debates of the 1970s and 80s, which pitted science against the arts, archaeologists have more freedom to choose how to `do archaeology'. The contributions to this book reflect this as problems are approached in --